"The practical use of cloud storage for us is as an extension – a potential way to move unstructured data out of the data center. Simpana treats the cloud as just another tier of storage. Conceptually, it looks like another target," Echols says.

Echols says customers can take advantage of Simpana’s built-in features including data deduplication, encryption and eDiscovery in conjunction with the cloud as a "farline" tier of storage. Customers can also add Simpana Search to index data prior to sending it to a cloud provider.

CommVault claims its software can lower the cost of cloud storage by as much as 75% through use of compression and deduplication. Current Simpana customers with active maintenance contracts can download the latest CommVault service pack to use the cloud capability.

CommVault is pricing the cloud offering as part of its per-terabyte capacity license. However, customers must also establish an account with one of the cloud providers.

According to a recent survey of 535 CommVault customers, 52% of respondents are considering the use of cloud storage services now or in the future. Respondents cited growing data volumes as the No. 1 reason to evaluate cloud services, followed by storage capacity limits, large data center footprints, lengthy retention requirements and costly storage infrastructures.